AT&T Adworks and DirecTV Advertising Sales Combine to Form One Advertising Organization

What: AT&T has announced DIRECTV Advertising Sales will now be a part of the AT&T AdWorks family under One Advertising Organization. Rick Welday was named President of AT&T AdWorks and will lead the division.Why it matters: After the FCC approved the AT&T DirectTV merger ten days ago, the combined entity is providing more concrete plans about how the two entities are going to integrate. The merged advertising sales organization will be an important player in the addressable TV market, now that more than 12 million DirecTV homes are added to its Blue print targeting solution.

Rick Welday (photo) was named President of AT&T AdWorks and will lead the division.

AT&T AdWorks now combines DIRECTV’s addressable TV targeting capability, which is one of the largest addressable TV advertising platform in the U.S., with the reach of AT&T AdWorks TV Blueprint data-driven solution. This combination, which is called AddressablePlusSM, gives advertisers the ability to reach their target audiences, at scale, delivering a better ROI than traditional approaches to national TV buying.

“The combination of 12 million addressable DIRECTV homes with the 70 million homes in the TV Blueprint audience network puts us in a unique position,” Welday said. “We will continue to reduce wasted spend in traditional national TV ad buys and provide best-in-class post campaign measurement to prove it.”

The combination also provides significant extended reach and scale for TV Everywhere and interactive TV.

AT&T AdWorks Addressable Advertising Opportunities by the Numbers

Total TV Households: 26 million

Addressable TV Households3: 12 million

TV Blueprint Households: 70 million (includes other MVPDs)

DIRECTV Addressable Advertising

The DIRECTV Addressable Advertising platform ensures that messages are delivered only to their target households. Gone are the days of wasteful TV ad buys based solely on age and gender demographics.

DIRECTV’s Addressable Advertising platform reaches target audiences at a household level via the world’s most powerful medium: television. Addressable Advertising campaigns are fueled by set-top box data and third-party data, yielding powerful information about specific target audiences. Advertisers can continually optimize their national TV ad buys, making them even smarter and more effective.

AT&T AdWorks TV BlueprintSM

TV Blueprint is an audience-targeting solution that uses anonymous and aggregate proprietary viewership data from millions of set-top boxes. Using this data, TV Blueprint develops custom, data-optimized media plans to better reach advertisers’ key target audiences. The proprietary algorithm was developed by AT&T Labs and analyzes second-by-second TV viewership behavior. It finds the optimal cable TV networks, days, and times of day to reach target audiences.

With the addition of DIRECTV households, TV Blueprint reaches more than 70 million2 homes across the U.S., providing audience targeting at scale.Advertisers can now integrate both audience targeting products--household Addressable Advertising and TV Blueprint--to create an industry leading combination called: AddressablePlus.

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